Grab those dice and Roll Through the Ages! in this addictive and strategic new game from Matt Leacock, the designer of the incredibly popular Pandemic. Roll Through the Ages plays in 30-45 minutes. The game is for 1-4 players, ages 8 and up.

<b>Board Games with Scott</b> is a "video blog" about many different types of board games. In each episode, Scott Nicholson presents a different game, explains it, and briefly reviews it. It's a great way to discover new games as well as learn more about games you're curious about. Enjoy!<p><b>Note:</b> <i>Board Games with Scott links will <b>open in a new window</b> and are <b>not</b> hosted by Funagain Games, nor is Funagain Games responsible for their content.</i></p>

Product Reviews

Roll Through the Ages is a brilliant and innovative design for a dice game with a
strong civilization theme. Can a dice game really give a civilization feel, or even
scratch that civilization itch slightly? In this case the answer is a resounding yes!

The game comes with an assortment of quality components well packed into a compact
and portable box. They include: 4 Pegboard; 24 Pegs (4 in each of six different
colours); 7 Dice; 1 Pad of Score Sheets; 2 Reference Sheets; and 1 Rule Book. The
pegboard includes tracks for managing different goods: Wood, Stone, Pottery, Cloth,
and Spearheads. There's also a Food track at the bottom, which you'll use to keep
track of food production - you'll need this to feed your Cities. Speaking of cities -
these are represented in the game by large wooden dice, which are heat stamped with
icons representing food, workers, resources, coins, and disasters.

You roll the dice Yahtzee style to determine what you can do on your turn. After
re-rolling your dice, you'll use your score sheet to write down how many goods or
food you've produced, technologies you've invented, monuments you've built, or
disasters that have happened. You can use workers to build more cities or
point-scoring monuments, you can use coins and resources to develop new technologies
(e.g. getting the Agriculture technology costs 15 coins, but gets you extra food each
time you roll the food icon, and 3 points at the end of the game), and you use food
to feed your people. At the end of the game, points are earned from technologies and
monuments, while disasters that have occurred during the course of the game will
cause points to be subtracted from your score.

Is it possible to make a civilization game with dice? As long as you're not expecting
a sumo wrestler the size of Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization (the board game
that obviously inspired the name of this dice game), and judge the game on its own
merits as a dice-rolling filler game, Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age has to be
commended for offering a genuinely civilization experience packed into 30 minutes.
There's a basic tech tree, there's interesting choices, there's tension, and there's
a high fun factor. It first made an appearance as part of the Gryphon Games Bookshelf
series, and has been a big hit. For me, the innovative game-play and civ-theme makes
this one of my favourite games in the series. A big thumbs up!

I played this game last weekend and absolutely loved it. It is a well-
thought-out and laid-out game. Everything is literally at your fingertips
and you don't have a problem learning it in about five to ten minutes. It
involves building a civilization with dice - wonderful!. There are some
areas in the game that need to be tweaked a little in my opinion,
though. For example the game can end if one player buys five
developments. I thought this made the game end too quick. I also
thought this made the strategy go to buying developments as quick as
you can because you would usually would win because of this. Maybe if
this rule was taken out and have it that the game ended only when all
players have built all the monuments collectively the game would be a
little longer and the strategy might change. Overall I liked the game and
think it is probably the best dice game I have ever played (certainly
better than Zombie Dice).

For the simplicity that a Dice game needs to be playable in a short time
(that's why we play dice games, right?) this game does an amazing and
subtle job of capturing the rise and fall of civilizations.

Here's one of my favorite mechanics -- the relationship between trade
and calamities/disease. If you just get a "trade" result then you only get
one amphora symbol (so not much trade), but if you get a SKULL result,
then you get TWO amphoras (lots of trade). One SKULL by itself is
actually harmless, but then two is kind of a bad result. It's great
subtlety that the more trade you do with other peoples, the more you're
vulnerable to famine/invasion/etc! And even more fun is the
guns/germs/steel reference of... if you manage to get EXACTLY THREE
skulls, you spread disease to your opponents rather than yourself!

Meanwhile you're trying to get enough food to feed all your cities (one
city equals one die roll per turn), and deciding whether to allocate your
workers to more cities (expanded economy) or wonders of the world
(more victory points right now). And there's a wonder race in the sense
that the first person who builds each wonder scores double.

And finally all your trading goes towards buying technologies which of
course slightly change the rules just for you.

I love this game, and play it with both hardcore gamers and my wife &
kids.